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- Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound,
- We stumbled on a stationary voice,
- And 'Stand, who goes?' 'Two from the palace' I.
- 'The second two: they wait,' he said, 'pass on;
- His Highness wakes:' and one, that clashed in arms,
- By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led
- Threading the soldier-city, till we heard
- The drowsy folds of our great ensign shake
- From blazoned lions o'er the imperial tent
- Whispers of war.
- Entering, the sudden light
- Dazed me half-blind: I stood and seemed to hear,
- As in a poplar grove when a light wind wakes
- A lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies,
- Each hissing in his neighbour's ear; and then
- A strangled titter, out of which there brake
- On all sides, clamouring etiquette to death,
- Unmeasured mirth; while now the two old kings
- Began to wag their baldness up and down,
- The fresh young captains flashed their glittering teeth,
- The huge bush-bearded Barons heaved and blew,
- And slain with laughter rolled the gilded Squire.
- At length my Sire, his rough cheek wet with tears,
- Panted from weary sides 'King, you are free!
- We did but keep you surety for our son,
- If this be he,--or a dragged mawkin, thou,
- That tends to her bristled grunters in the sludge:'
- For I was drenched with ooze, and torn with briers,
- More crumpled than a poppy from the sheath,
- And all one rag, disprinced from head to heel.
- Then some one sent beneath his vaulted palm
- A whispered jest to some one near him, 'Look,
- He has been among his shadows.' 'Satan take
- The old women and their shadows! (thus the King
- Roared) make yourself a man to fight with men.
- Go: Cyril told us all.'
- As boys that slink
- From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye,
- Away we stole, and transient in a trice
- From what was left of faded woman-slough
- To sheathing splendours and the golden scale
- Of harness, issued in the sun, that now
- Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth,
- And hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met us.
- A little shy at first, but by and by
- We twain, with mutual pardon asked and given
- For stroke and song, resoldered peace, whereon
- Followed his tale. Amazed he fled away
- Through the dark land, and later in the night
- Had come on Psyche weeping: 'then we fell
- Into your father's hand, and there she lies,
- But will not speak, or stir.'
- He showed a tent
- A stone-shot off: we entered in, and there
- Among piled arms and rough accoutrements,
- Pitiful sight, wrapped in a soldier's cloak,
- Like some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot,
- And pushed by rude hands from its pedestal,
- All her fair length upon the ground she lay:
- And at her head a follower of the camp,
- A charred and wrinkled piece of womanhood,
- Sat watching like the watcher by the dead.
- Then Florian knelt, and 'Come' he whispered to her,
- 'Lift up your head, sweet sister: lie not thus.
- What have you done but right? you could not slay
- Me, nor your prince: look up: be comforted:
- Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought,
- When fallen in darker ways.' And likewise I:
- 'Be comforted: have I not lost her too,
- In whose least act abides the nameless charm
- That none has else for me?' She heard, she moved,
- She moaned, a folded voice; and up she sat,
- And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth
- As those that mourn half-shrouded over death
- In deathless marble. 'Her,' she said, 'my friend--
- Parted from her--betrayed her cause and mine--
- Where shall I breathe? why kept ye not your faith?
- O base and bad! what comfort? none for me!'
- To whom remorseful Cyril, 'Yet I pray
- Take comfort: live, dear lady, for your child!'
- At which she lifted up her voice and cried.
- 'Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my child,
- My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more!
- For now will cruel Ida keep her back;
- And either she will die from want of care,
- Or sicken with ill-usage, when they say
- The child is hers--for every little fault,
- The child is hers; and they will beat my girl
- Remembering her mother: O my flower!
- Or they will take her, they will make her hard,
- And she will pass me by in after-life
- With some cold reverence worse than were she dead.
- Ill mother that I was to leave her there,
- To lag behind, scared by the cry they made,
- The horror of the shame among them all:
- But I will go and sit beside the doors,
- And make a wild petition night and day,
- Until they hate to hear me like a wind
- Wailing for ever, till they open to me,
- And lay my little blossom at my feet,
- My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child:
- And I will take her up and go my way,
- And satisfy my soul with kissing her:
- Ah! what might that man not deserve of me
- Who gave me back my child?' 'Be comforted,'
- Said Cyril, 'you shall have it:' but again
- She veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so
- Like tender things that being caught feign death,
- Spoke not, nor stirred.
- By this a murmur ran
- Through all the camp and inward raced the scouts
- With rumour of Prince Arab hard at hand.
- We left her by the woman, and without
- Found the gray kings at parle: and 'Look you' cried
- My father 'that our compact be fulfilled:
- You have spoilt this child; she laughs at you and man:
- She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him:
- But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire;
- She yields, or war.'
- Then Gama turned to me:
- 'We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time
- With our strange girl: and yet they say that still
- You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large:
- How say you, war or not?'
- 'Not war, if possible,
- O king,' I said, 'lest from the abuse of war,
- The desecrated shrine, the trampled year,
- The smouldering homestead, and the household flower
- Torn from the lintel--all the common wrong--
- A smoke go up through which I loom to her
- Three times a monster: now she lightens scorn
- At him that mars her plan, but then would hate
- (And every voice she talked with ratify it,
- And every face she looked on justify it)
- The general foe. More soluble is this knot,
- By gentleness than war. I want her love.
- What were I nigher this although we dashed
- Your cities into shards with catapults,
- She would not love;--or brought her chained, a slave,
- The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord,
- Not ever would she love; but brooding turn
- The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance
- Were caught within the record of her wrongs,
- And crushed to death: and rather, Sire, than this
- I would the old God of war himself were dead,
- Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills,
- Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck,
- Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice,
- Not to be molten out.'
- And roughly spake
- My father, 'Tut, you know them not, the girls.
- Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think
- That idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir!
- Man is the hunter; woman is his game:
- The sleek and shining creatures of the chase,
- We hunt them for the beauty of their skins;
- They love us for it, and we ride them down.
- Wheedling and siding with them! Out! for shame!
- Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them
- As he that does the thing they dare not do,
- Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes
- With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in
- Among the women, snares them by the score
- Flattered and flustered, wins, though dashed with death
- He reddens what he kisses: thus I won
- You mother, a good mother, a good wife,
- Worth winning; but this firebrand--gentleness
- To such as her! if Cyril spake her true,
- To catch a dragon in a cherry net,
- To trip a tigress with a gossamer
- Were wisdom to it.'
- 'Yea but Sire,' I cried,
- 'Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier? No:
- What dares not Ida do that she should prize
- The soldier? I beheld her, when she rose
- The yesternight, and storming in extremes,
- Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down
- Gagelike to man, and had not shunned the death,
- No, not the soldier's: yet I hold her, king,
- True woman: you clash them all in one,
- That have as many differences as we.
- The violet varies from the lily as far
- As oak from elm: one loves the soldier, one
- The silken priest of peace, one this, one that,
- And some unworthily; their sinless faith,
- A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty,
- Glorifying clown and satyr; whence they need
- More breadth of culture: is not Ida right?
- They worth it? truer to the law within?
- Severer in the logic of a life?
- Twice as magnetic to sweet influences
- Of earth and heaven? and she of whom you speak,
- My mother, looks as whole as some serene
- Creation minted in the golden moods
- Of sovereign artists; not a thought, a touch,
- But pure as lines of green that streak the white
- Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves; I say,
- Not like the piebald miscellany, man,
- Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire,
- But whole and one: and take them all-in-all,
- Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind,
- As truthful, much that Ida claims as right
- Had ne'er been mooted, but as frankly theirs
- As dues of Nature. To our point: not war:
- Lest I lose all.'
- 'Nay, nay, you spake but sense'
- Said Gama. 'We remember love ourself
- In our sweet youth; we did not rate him then
- This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows.
- You talk almost like Ida: she can talk;
- And there is something in it as you say:
- But you talk kindlier: we esteem you for it.--
- He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince,
- I would he had our daughter: for the rest,
- Our own detention, why, the causes weighed,
- Fatherly fears--you used us courteously--
- We would do much to gratify your Prince--
- We pardon it; and for your ingress here
- Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land,
- you did but come as goblins in the night,
- Nor in the furrow broke the ploughman's head,
- Nor burnt the grange, nor bussed the milking-maid,
- Nor robbed the farmer of his bowl of cream:
- But let your Prince (our royal word upon it,
- He comes back safe) ride with us to our lines,
- And speak with Arac: Arac's word is thrice
- As ours with Ida: something may be done--
- I know not what--and ours shall see us friends.
- You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will,
- Follow us: who knows? we four may build some plan
- Foursquare to opposition.'
- Here he reached
- White hands of farewell to my sire, who growled
- An answer which, half-muffled in his beard,
- Let so much out as gave us leave to go.
- Then rode we with the old king across the lawns
- Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring
- In every bole, a song on every spray
- Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke
- Desire in me to infuse my tale of love
- In the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozed
- All o'er with honeyed answer as we rode
- And blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dews
- Gathered by night and peace, with each light air
- On our mailed heads: but other thoughts than Peace
- Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares,
- And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers
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